Quotations about Flowers

Flowers are the sweetest things God ever made, and forgot to put a soul into. ~Henry Beecher, Life Thoughts, 1858


Earth laughs in flowers. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Hamatreya"


I'd rather have roses on my table than diamonds on my neck. ~Emma Goldman


People from a planet without flowers would think we must be mad with joy the whole time to have such things about us. ~Iris Murdoch, A Fairly Honourable Defeat


For myself I hold no preferences among flowers, so long as they are wild, free, spontaneous. Bricks to all greenhouses! Black thumb and cutworm to the potted plant! ~Edward Abbey


I will be the gladdest thing
Under the sun!
I will touch a hundred flowers
And not pick one.
~Edna St. Vincent Millay, "Afternoon on a Hill"


The temple bell stops but I still hear the sound coming out of the flowers. ~Basho


To be overcome by the fragrance of flowers is a delectable form of defeat. ~Beverly Nichols


Flowers... are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty outvalues all the utilities of the world. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1844


A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books. ~Walt Whitman


'Tis my faith that every flower
Enjoys the air it breathes!
~William Wordsworth, "Lines Written in Early Spring," Lyrical Ballads, 1798


The violets in the mountains have broken the rocks. ~Tennessee Williams


Flowers are without hope. Because hope is tomorrow and flowers have no tomorrow. ~Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin


Break open a cherry tree and there are no flowers, but the spring breeze brings forth myriad blossoms. ~Ikkyu Sojun


Perfumes are the feelings of flowers. ~Heinrich Heine, The Hartz Journey


Summer set lip to earth's bosom bare,
And left the flushed print in a poppy there.
~Francis Thompson, "The Poppy," 1891


How can one help shivering with delight when one's hot fingers close around the stem of a live flower, cool from the shade and stiff with newborn vigor! ~Colette


Look at us, said the violets blooming at her feet, all last winter we slept in the seeming death but at the right time God awakened us, and here we are to comfort you. ~Edward Payson Rod


Flowers seem intended for the solace of ordinary humanity. ~John Ruskin


Pluck not the wayside flower;
It is the traveler's dower.
~William Allingham


When you have only two pennies left in the world, buy a loaf of bread with one, and a lily with the other. ~Chinese Proverb


If you've never been thrilled to the very edges of your soul by a flower in spring bloom, maybe your soul has never been in bloom. ~Terri Guillemets


Flowers have an expression of countenance as much as men or animals. Some seem to smile; some have a sad expression; some are pensive and diffident; others again are plain, honest and upright, like the broad-faced sunflower and the hollyhock. ~Henry Ward Beecher, Star Papers: A Discourse of Flowers


Give me odorous at sunrise a garden of beautiful flowers where I can walk undisturbed. ~Walt Whitman



The flower is the poetry of reproduction. It is an example of the eternal seductiveness of life. ~Jean Giraudoux


Why do people give each other flowers? To celebrate various important occasions, they're killing living creatures? Why restrict it to plants? "Sweetheart, let's make up. Have this deceased squirrel." ~The Washington Post


Flowers really do intoxicate me. ~Vita Sackville-West


Flowers whisper "Beauty!" to the world, even as they fade, wilt, fall. ~Dr. SunWolf


Flowers are those little colorful beacons of the sun from which we get sunshine when dark, somber skies blanket our thoughts. ~Dodinsky, www.dodinsky.com


The flower offered of itself
And eloquently spoke
Of Gods
In languages of rainbows
Perfumes
And secret silence...
~Phillip Pulfrey, from Love, Abstraction and other Speculations, www.originals.net


Every flower is a soul blossoming in nature. ~Gerard de Nerval


There is that in the glance of a flower which may at times control the greatest of creation's braggart lords. ~John Muir, A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf, 1916


With daffodils mad footnotes for the spring,
And asters purple asterisks for autumn -
~Conrad Aiken, Preludes for Memnon, 1930


The poet's darling. ~William Wordsworth, "To the Daisy"


Bread feeds the body, indeed, but flowers feed also the soul. ~The Koran


If dandelions were hard to grow, they would be most welcome on any lawn. ~Andrew Mason


I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
~William Wordsworth, "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud," 1804


I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers. ~Claude Monet


The flowers of late winter and early spring occupy places in our hearts well out of proportion to their size. ~Gertrude S. Wister


Can we conceive what humanity would be if it did not know the flowers? ~Maurice Maeterlinck


Let us dance in the sun, wearing wild flowers in our hair... ~Susan Polis Shutz


The flower that follows the sun does so even in cloudy days. ~Robert Leighton


I like to think a flower opens itself to outgrow its plantedness. That it yearns to be carried away. ~Author Unknown


Being perfect artists and ingenuous poets, the Chinese have piously preserved the love and holy cult of flowers; one of the very rare and most ancient traditions which has survived their decadence. And since flowers had to be distinguished from each other, they have attributed graceful analogies to them, dreamy images, pure and passionate names which perpetuate and harmonize in our minds the sensations of gentle charm and violent intoxication with which they inspire us. So it is that certain peonies, their favorite flower, are saluted by the Chinese, according to their form or color, by these delicious names, each an entire poem and an entire novel: The Young Girl Who Offers Her Breasts, or: The Water That Sleeps Beneath the Moon, or: The Sunlight in the Forest, or: The First Desire of the Reclining Virgin, or: My Gown Is No Longer All White Because in Tearing It the Son of Heaven Left a Little Rosy Stain; or, even better, this one: I Possessed My Lover in the Garden. ~Octave Mirbeau, Torture Garden, "The Garden," Chapter 5


A profusion of pink roses bending ragged in the rain speaks to me of all gentleness and its enduring. ~The Collected Later Poems of William Carlos Williams


Flowers have spoken to me more than I can tell in written words. They are the hieroglyphics of angels, loved by all men for the beauty of their character, though few can decipher even fragments of their meaning. ~Lydia M. Child


You can't be suspicious of a tree, or accuse a bird or a squirrel of subversion or challenge the ideology of a violet. ~Hal Borland, Sundial of the Seasons, 1964


God loved the flowers and invented soil. Man loved the flowers and invented vases. ~Variation of a saying by Jacques Deval (God loved the birds and invented trees. Man loved the birds and invented cages.)